1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for supporting a trade, and more particularly, to a method and system which support and control securities transactions.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a company raises capital by offering a new set of shares or bonds to the public, it will issue a prospectus that provides the specifics of the securities for sale, including such information as their suggested price and the total volume of that public offering. Investors are allowed to apply for the new share offering during a period of about three weeks. After the expiration of that subscription period, all or part of the applicants can purchase the company's new securities which are made available at the suggested price, average price, or optimal price.
On the other hand, the company's existing securities are traded in the secondary market. Its market price, however, may sometimes fall below the suggested offering price of the new securities for sale during the subscription period. This means that the applicants will have to buy the same securities at a higher price than the actual market price, which is an undesirable situation for them.
Conventional stock exchanges used to provide a trading system of open outcry on the trading floor, which allowed the “floor representatives” to manipulate stock prices to solve the above-mentioned problem. The days of such trading systems, however, are gone now. Most modern stock exchanges employ a computerized trading system, where the conventional solution is no longer possible.